On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (53 page)

“Come on!” She called running in.

The inside of the house was bare, except for some decently
high end camera equipment and lights. That and a bed cast in light from the
window in the center of the room. In the middle of it, the girl that Don had
been turned into laid. Tied face down. There was a clear plastic bag over her
head, tied tightly with a white cord at the neck. Kate ran to her ripping desperately
at the crap over her mouth and nose.

Cavendish and Blaine did something to several men and the one
woman in the room, who went silent within moments.

Britney screamed.

“
Don
!” Tears in her eyes she pushed Kate out of the
way and started keening.

Kate summoned a small energy loop and sliced through the
ropes quickly. The boy from the van ran in and looked around for a second,
finally running to Don and pulling her to the floor. Britney hitting at him.
Which got ignored for the first few seconds.

“We have to get her on a hard surface for CPR!” He hit Don on
the chest hard and started forcing air into her lungs, breathing for her.

“Come on, breathe.” He yelled at her when he rose to take a
breath and push on her chest her chest rose when he breathed for her, but the
lips were still blue.

“Fucking
breathe
!” He screamed at the girl on the
floor.

He didn't stop, keeping this up for over full minute, until
Don finally took a huge gasping breath. The brown haired girl shuddered, taking
several deep, wracking breaths let color rapidly return to her lips and face.

“Don!” Britney yelled again, this time sounding relieved if
still worried. She pushed the boy out of the way again, and grabbed the girl
halfway off the dirty pine boards she'd laid on, sobbing. Huge things that
pulled at Kate's heart. It hurt, but there was happiness in it too. She hadn't
really thought that she'd still be able to feel after all of that.

The boy stood and walked over to where Blaine and Cavendish
had the people in the house trapped, held against the wall, cowering from the
pain that doing anything
but
cowering caused them. One tried to move,
only to find a foot striking a shoulder perfectly to cause a dislocation. That
was Cavendish, who
wasn't
smiling anymore.

That was probably a very bad sign.

After a few moments Kate recognized them as most of the staff
of McC's. The woman from the back room, in a t-shirt this time, rather than the
ugly red suede thing she'd had on when they'd gotten Britney's tape from her,
sat unmoving, crying as if she had a right to. That hadn't been earned yet, in
either suffering or torment.

She looked up at Kate and Britney and called for help.

“I'm not with these men, the made me do it! I've been being
held prisoner all this time...”

Kate called for Zack, using a line of energy and thought,
though she spoke the words at the same time for everyone else to hear. He
simply appeared in the air in front of them, then pulled half a dozen people
through the rift that he'd built into the death room. The boy from the school
looked on, wide eyed after the first few people showed up, but he didn't say
anything.

Hilda came in with a roll of duct tape and wrapped up the
eight monsters in the house securely, Troy stepped forward and took command
almost instantly, everyone deferring to him. It made sense. He'd done this
before, after all. More times that any of the rest of them knew, she didn't
doubt.

“Zack, get information from them, you know what we need.
Names, numbers and other crimes they've committed. Claire, write that down
please? Hilda, you're on guard. If they try to struggle knock them out. Blaine,
Britney, see to Don please. Kate, scary man and first aid boy, you're with me.”

He walked them all outside, moving quickly.

He looked at Kate and Cavendish, then toward kid next to them
who looked back at him harder than he probably meant to. Troy leaned forward
and hugged Kate and clapped the boy on the arm.

“I need the story here. We have to know
everything
,
don't leave anything out, all right?”

Kate explained everything from her perspective and Cavendish
added no more than a line, mostly about having disarmed the three that had
weapons when he'd gone in. Troy didn't even ask for clarification, having seen
him fight several times now. The boy next to them went next, eying the smiling
bald man next to him while he spoke, looking very uncomfortable.

“I'm Ken Morley, those people killed Rachel Mills, she was
my... really, I doubt she even knew who I was. We had a chem class together and
I had a crush on her. I know that I probably don't have a real reason to be
here, but... Somebody has to speak for her, too. I know she didn't have a lot
of people...” He looked ready to argue the point with them, or even fight, as
ridiculous as that seemed. No one laughed at him,
or
told him that he
had to leave. Troy just thanked him for saving Don's life and Kate turned to
him, hugging him for a long time.

Just because his loss was of something he never really had,
did that make it less important? Kate didn't know, but she hoped that if she
ever found herself in the same situation as Rachel, someone would stand up for
her when the time came.

Zack called them all in, his voice sounding sad. Tired too,
but the battle of the last night may have had something to do with that. Humans
needed to sleep, and none of them with her could have for a very long time.

“I've got the information. It isn't nice...” He laid the
whole thing out for them, not holding anything back, even as people stared uncomfortably.

“They watched who came in to the bar and looked like they
could be taken without too much trouble. So people that used the hole in the
bathroom mainly, especially if it looked like they were drunk or lonely, people
easily drawn away later.

“Then they brought them here and... abused them, the normal
stuff you'd assume, sodomy, rape, some torture and beating, choking them
repeatedly, they were producing snuff films, real ones, because they thought it
would make more money than anything else they could do in porn.

“They dumped the bodies under the same bush each time as
advertizing
.
So that people would know that their films were real.”

He took a deep breath and continued for the people that
weren't there before.

“Riley's aunt, Kassandra, had Don turn into a woman, and go
to the bar, to get their attention, knowing they would want one last score
here, before picking up and moving to someplace new. She did it, and they
slipped something into her drink, after a staged fight with her 'boyfriend'
Dwayne, for... um, sucking off a bunch of guys in the bathroom. Then they
brought her here and did things to her, raping her over and over again until
she woke up enough to scream entertainingly, for the movie.”

Kate felt sick when she heard it, she could hardly stand to
listen, but there was more. She had to fight not to cover her ears with her
hands, but she owed her friend more than that.

“They kept almost killing her and then letting her come back,
over and again. Even when she begged for death, they kept doing it. The woman,
the one from the bar, she isn't their prisoner, she's their
leader
. It
was all her idea in the first place. She did it for money. Just that. She isn't
even a psychopath or mentally ill in some other way. It was all about making
money, the whole time. For her.”

Kate formed a blade around her hand and no one in the room
stopped her when she cut the woman's head off. She could wish her to suffer
more, but that wouldn't help anyone now. No, the only thing to be done now was
make sure Don knew she was safe. She moved to the next one, but Britney ran
over, looking around for something to kill with, Troy finally handed her a
large, very sharp looking knife with a metal handle that looked like it was
part of the blade. It had writing on it, but Kate couldn't read it from where
she stood.

Britney, sweet little thing that she was, stabbed the man in
the face over and over again until he died. That was an Alede thing. They
didn't often kill, but when they did, it wasn't uncommon for them to destroy a
person's face like that. It took away their power. Right now it seemed fairly
just to her, but she'd just spent the night before killing things. It was, most
likely, that her thoughts on the matter might be a little off at the moment.

The men next to him started screaming after a while, realizing
they'd be next. When Brit couldn't stab any more, Troy walked over and slit the
man's throat, making sure he was really dead.

Blaine took the next one, making it last longer and hurt
more, a lot more. His face didn't survive either, but he lived through it being
cut off.

Hilda went and looked through the viewer of the camera,
watching the video for a while, a scent of burnt toast came off of her as she
walked up to one of the men in particular, who was sitting near the end of the
line if they were going along the direction they had been. She grabbed the man
with her left hand by his right arm, near the shoulder and picked him up off
the floor all together.

“You hurt my friend. You hurt other innocent people that never
harmed you or yours.
Death is too good for you. Suffer first.”

The she pulled his arm from his socket, broke the arm with a
twist and repeated it on the other side. When she finished she reached between
his legs and grabbed, finally making a ripping motion. He bled from the crotch,
inside his jeans. The man whimpered piteously. She set him on the ground and
stomped his right knee, then the other as he screamed for mercy.

“Mercy? You want
mercy
? It's too late to have thoughts
for that now. Here is your mercy then, when you beg for death, I will give it
to you. If you beg hard enough!”

Eight minutes later the man began to beg to die, three
minutes after that she grabbed his head and
crushed
it. Kate was happy
she'd done it, but knew that she'd have nightmares about that sound for a long
time. It had resonated in her chest and her stomach, a dull cracking sound, she
could make out the different breaks in her mind when she thought about it, a
creaking followed by distinctive pops.

The boy, the
man
, Ken Morley stepped forward to take
his own turn. Surprisingly Cavendish stepped forward and put his hand out toward
the boy, stopping him.

“Your friend is gone. It will help Don to know that she isn't
alone, but your Rachel is beyond care for that. I won't stop you if you really
need that vengeance, but it won't help you, and it won't help your love.”

Ken teared up and shook his head, then put his hand out. Troy
handed him the same knife that Britney had used earlier, that he'd cleaned
carefully in the mean time, watching the events unfold. He stepped forward to
the closest one and looked at Cavendish, swallowing his fear, then he looked at
Don who sat, crying still.

“I know this won't help Rachel, but I'm Don's friend, too now.
Besides, if I let everyone else do the hard parts, how could I live with myself
later?” He didn't torture the man, but did take his head off. It took about
twenty seconds and the man screamed for most of that time, but he got the head
all the way off, then dropped the knife, staggered to the corner of the room
and threw up. Retching for about a minute then turning to the room and
apologizing sheepishly.

Britney and Blaine both moved to him and held the man between
them, moving over to where Claire held Don steady. They let Ken go and looked
over at Claire, who stood and walked to one of the remaining four.

She punched him in the head, the move so hard and fast that
it looked a bit like his head exploded. It wasn't fast enough to turn his head
into a mist, but there was no doubt that he was dead before his body could
slump back away from her. She borrowed his shirt to clean her hand on.

Kate hadn't even realized that Libby had been in the room
until she moved on one of the men.
She
used a knife, but she made what
Hilda did look gentle. If it lacked the savagery that Britney had shown it was
only to try and keep the man alive longer.

Walking over casually, what must have seemed like slow motion
to him, Zack, clearly focused into a hyper fast state, kicked one of the
remaining men under the chin. He'd been a dark skinned man, with short hair and
a nice clean shave. His head came most of the way off and flopped backwards.
Kate had barely even seen his foot move.

The last one sat whimpering and begging. Don got up,
surprising everyone one and staggered over to the man. She grabbed his chin and
made him look at her. He tried to look away, sobbing, but she didn't let him.

“Why?” She asked him, her voice flat and sounding dangerous. “Tell
me why you did it and make me believe you won't do it again and we'll let you
go.” The promise sounded... not sweet, but pure, innocent.

“Why?”

The man just shook and cried, he finally spoke sounding
hoarse.

“Because no woman would have me. No matter what I did, they
always said no. I couldn't take it anymore. That's why. Now just kill me or
not.” He closed his eyes. Zack shook his head at Don, who actually looked sad.

“OK. I understand.” Don looked at the man and focused, head
clear now from the drugs, at least enough it seemed. The man just...
stopped
.
He wasn't alive any more. Kate couldn't tell what Don had done, but it seemed
to work pretty well. Troy cut his head off too, just to make sure the job had
gotten done.

Taking a deep breath Troy organized a cleanup, Zack carried
the bodies through the rift and took them away. Willet and his associates took
the video equipment and destroyed the video itself. They left in the van.
Willet asking them to tell Jelly he'd be in touch within twenty-four hours. Don
got turned back into a guy, which shocked Ken a bit, but he didn't freak out
like everyone had thought he would.